The J. Paul Getty Museum

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

Object Details

Title:

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

Artist/Maker:

Joachim Beuckelaer (Netherlandish, about 1534 - about 1574)

Culture:

Netherlandish

Date:

1563

Medium:

Oil on panel

Object Number:

71.PB.59

Dimensions:

110.5 × 210.8 cm (43 1/2 × 83 in.)

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Object Description

At the left, Saint Peter and other disciples of Christ pull their teeming nets of fish aboard a boat. After an unsuccessful night of fishing on the Sea of Tiberius, the tired and hungry disciples had seen a man standing on the shore and followed his advice to cast their nets over the boat's right side. Their miraculous catch inspired Peter to recognize Christ, appearing after his death and Resurrection; in the middle scene, Peter enters the water to meet him. On the right, Christ and the disciples share a meal around a fire. The foreground depicts peasants hauling in baskets of fish to take to the market, forming a contemporary parallel to the biblical scene.

Joachim Beuckelaer specialized in combining genre subjects with religious scenes. In The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, he contrasted the spiritual world of the Bible with the materialism of the contemporary world.

Provenance
Provenance
by 1821 - 1832

Godfrey Bosville Macdonald, 3rd baron Macdonald of Slate, 1775 - 1832 (Thorpe Hall, Bridlington, Humberside, England), by inheritance to Alexander William Robert Bosville Macdonald, 1832.

1832 - 1847

Sir Alexander William Robert Bosville Macdonald, de jure twelfth Bart., 1800 - 1847 (Thorpe Hall, Bridlington, Humberside, England), by inheritance to Godfrey Wentworth Bayard Bosville, 1847.

1847 - 1865

Sir Godfrey Wentworth Bayard Bosville, de jure thirteenth Bart., 1826 - 1865 (Thorpe Hall, Bridlington, Humberside, England), by inheritance to Alexander Wentworth Macdonald Bosville Macdonald of the Isles, 1865.

1865 - 1933

Sir Alexander Wentworth Macdonald Bosville Macdonald of the Isles, fourteenth Bart., 1865 - 1933 (Thorpe Hall, Bridlington, Humberside, England), by inheritance to Godfrey Middleton Bosville Macdonald of the Isles, 1933.

1933 - 1951

Sir Godfrey Middleton Bosville Macdonald of the Isles, fifteenth Bart., 1887 - 1951 (Thorpe Hall, Bridlington, Humberside, England), by inheritance to Alexander Somerled Angus Bosville Macdonald of Sleat, 1951.

1951 - 1958

Sir Alexander Somerled Angus Bosville Macdonald of Sleat, sixteenth Bart., 1917 - 1958 (Thorpe Hall, Bridlington, Humberside, England), by inheritance to Ian Godfrey Bosville Macdonald of Sleat, 1958.

1958 - 1971

Sir Ian Godfrey Bosville Macdonald of Sleat, seventeenth Bart., born 1947 (Thorpe Hall, Bridlington, Humberside, England) [consigned and withdrawn, Agnew's, 1971], consigned to Herner-Wengraf Ltd., 1971.

1971

Herner-Wengraf Ltd. (London, England), sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1971.

Exhibitions
Exhibitions
Masterpieces from Yorkshire Houses (June 1951)
  • City Art Gallery (York), June to June 1951
Flemish Art, 1300 - 1700 (December 5, 1953 to March 6, 1954)
  • Royal Academy of Arts (London), December 5, 1953 to March 6, 1954
Old Masters: Recent Acquisitions (November 2 to December 10, 1971)
  • Thomas Agnew & Sons, Ltd. (London), November 2 to December 10, 1971
The J. Paul Getty Collection (June 29 to September 3, 1972)
  • The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis), June 29 to September 3, 1972
Making a Renaissance Painting (December 5, 2000 to August 19, 2001)
  • The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center (Los Angeles), December 5, 2000 to August 19, 2001
Bibliography
Bibliography

Waterhouse, Ellis K. "Exhibitions of Old Masters at Newcastle, York, and Perth." The Burlington Magazine 93, no. 581 (August 1951), pp. 262-63, fig. 15.

Tomory, P. A. Masterpieces from Yorkshire Houses, exh. cat. (York: City of York Art Gallery, 1951), p. 5, no. 3.

Flemish Art, 1300-1700, exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1953), p. 103, no. 357.

Flemish Art 1300-1700, exh. cat. 2nd. ed. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1953), p. 103, no. 357.

Le Siècle de Bruegel: La peinture en Belgique au XVIe siècle, exh. cat. (Brussels: Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique, 1963), p. 49, under no. 15, entry by Edith Greindl.

Le Siècle de Bruegel: la peinture en Belgique au XVIe siècle, exh. cat. 2nd. ed. (Brussels: Musées royaux des beaux-arts de Belgique, 1963), p. 49, under no. 15, entry by Edith Greindl.

Old Masters: Recent Acquisitions, exh. cat. (London: Thomas Agnew & Sons, 1971), unpaginated, no. 33, fig. 33.

Fredericksen, Burton B. Catalogue of the Paintings in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1972), pp. 63-64, no. 78.

The J. Paul Getty Collection, exh. cat. (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1972), unpaginated, no. 18, ill.

Fredericksen, Burton B., ed. The J. Paul Getty Museum: Greek and Roman Antiquities, Western European Paintings, French Decorative Arts of the Eighteenth Century (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1975), pp. 70, 107, ill.

Frel, Jiri, Burton B. Fredericksen, and Gillian Wilson. The J. Paul Getty Museum Guidebook. 3rd ed. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1975), pp. 54-55.

Fredericksen, Burton B., et al. Guidebook: The J. Paul Getty Museum. 3rd ed. (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1976), p. 57.

Moxey, Keith P. F. "The 'Humanist' Market Scenes of Joachim Beuckelaer: Moralizing Exemple or 'Slices of Life?'" Jaarboek van het Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1976), pp. 169-70, fig. 51.

Moxey, Keith. Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer, and the Rise of Secular Painting in the Context of the Reformation (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1977), pp. 92-93, fig. 48.

Fredericksen, Burton B., Jiří Frel, and Gillian Wilson. Guidebook: The J. Paul Getty Museum. 4th ed. Sandra Morgan, ed. (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1978), p. 74.

Fredericksen, Burton B., Jiří Frel, and Gillian Wilson. The J. Paul Getty Museum Guidebook. 5th ed. (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1980), p. 61.

Verbraeken, Paul, ed. Joachim Beuckelaer: Het markt- en keukenstuk in de Nederlanden 1550-1650, exh. cat. (Ghent: Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 1986), pp. 120-21, under no. 6, fig. 1, entry by Paul Verbraeken.

Cavalli-Björkman, Görel. "A Fishmarket by Joachim Beuckelaer." Konsthistorisk tidskrift 55, no. 3 (1986), p. 119.

Falkenburg, Reindert Leonard. "Iconographical Connections Between Antwerp Landscapes, Market Scenes, and Kitchen Pieces, 1500-1580." Oud Holland 102, no. 2 (1988), pp. 122-23, 125n20, fig. 14.

"Part I: Catalogue of Paintings Offered for Sale." In Otto Naumann, Ltd. Inaugural Exhibition of Old Master Paintings, 12 January-1 March 1995, exh. cat. (New York: Otto Naumann, Ltd., 1995), p. 84, under no. 16, entry by Frits Duparc.

Paulußen, Markus. "Jan Brueghel d. Ä.: 'Weltlandschaft' und enzyklopädisches Stilleben." Ph.D. diss. (Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen, 1997), p. 40.

Dik, Joris, et al. "The Technical Examination of Joachim Beuckelaer's 'The Miraculous Draught of Fishes.'" In ICOM Committee for Conservation, 11th Triennial Meeting Edinburgh, 1-6 September 1996. Janet Bridgland, ed. 2 vols. (London: James & James Ltd., 1996), vol. 1, pp. 348-54, figs. 1-4.

Jaffé, David. Summary Catalogue of European Paintings in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997), p. 10, ill.

Honig, Elizabeth Alice. Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 83-84, fig. 26.

Silver, Larry. Peasant Scenes and Landscapes: The Rise of Pictorial Genres in the Antwerp Art Market (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), p. 94, fig. 5.5.

Woollett, Anne T., and Ariane van Suchtelen, eds. Rubens and Brueghel: A Working Friendship, exh. cat. (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, with Waanders, 2006), p. 189.

Fredericksen, Burton B. The Burdens of Wealth: Paul Getty and His Museum (Bloomington: Archway Publishing, 2015), p. 106.